Florida State University is home to over forty thousand students, teachers and faculty. Young adults can be seen walking, wandering, jogging or sprinting to class around campus at any time of the day or night, all days of the week. Campus is a welcoming place, easily accessible to anyone who wishes to walk onto campus: student or not–which makes safety a top priority.

Florida State has created various different outlets for student safety, such as the campus blue light poles, which allow students to call for police if they find themselves in trouble, as well as various self defense classes taught on campus by Florida State’s police officers. However, the most important part in campus safety is the police department itself, and how police force both patrols the campus and responds to calls.

As a student who has had to walk alone on campus at night, safety has been a big concern in my own life. There have been nights where I haven’t seen a single officer from the walk from the parking garage to my dorm, and this lack of visibility is something that sparked interest in me. I wanted to know exactly where the officers were and what they were doing, so I decided to call the FSU Police Department and ask.

The FSUPD has a program that allows students to actually ride along with an officer during their shift so that they can learn more about the campus and the police force. Any student who wishes to participate in the program needs to first pick up consent and background check forms from the police department, have them signed and notarized, and allow a twenty-four hour wait period for the background check to be run. Once the period is up, you simply call the office and talk to someone about riding with an officer.

I called in at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday night, was given the clear to come in, and began my journey with the FSUPD an hour later when I was greeted by Officer Cutchins in the lobby, who gave me a brief tour of the department and introduced me to his supervisor before taking me with him to his car.

Officer Cutchins explained to me that the main campus is divided into two areas, the east side and the west side, the dividing line being Woodward Avenue. Both areas have cops who remain stationary all night, as well as roaming cops, the position Officer Cutchins and I held that night. Roam cops are encouraged to move freely between both areas of campus and are free to answer any call.

Within the first five minutes of my being in the car, the officer I was with pulled over a vehicle due to broken headlights. Officer Cutchins simply put on his lights, no siren, to indicate he was pulling the vehicle over, and calmly talked to the driver. He had me wait in the car while he spoke to the driver, but the conversation was short, and Officer Cutchins let the driver off with a warning.

When the officer returned to the car and began roaming campus, he explained to me that he likes to give students the opportunity to fix a problem instead of just giving them a ticket. I found this to be a pleasant surprise: not all police officers want to hand out tickets to students.

After this, we took a drive through various parking lots and parking garages to make sure there were no car robberies taking place. Part of being on a roam shift is ensuring that the cars in parking lots are safe, and that there aren’t any people where they shouldn’t be.

When I asked him if the defensiveness of certain students bothered him, he explained to me that it’s not always about being liked, but about keeping students safe.

Because it was still early in the night and not much was going on, he asked his supervisor if he could show me the south end of campus, so we drove out there so he could explain to me how security works on the south end. The south end of campus is very spread out, so they have a police officer remain down there at all times, so that if anything were to go wrong, someone could respond shortly.

At around 10:30 I switched to Officer Dills, and after a brief stop at FSUPD headquarters, we took off into the night as well.

As we approached Gaines, there was word of a car jacking, with the possibility of the two culprits possibly headed towards one of the school parking garages. Officer Dills responded quickly and drove us straight to the parking garage. He remained in and around the garage until it was given the all clear that the culprits had headed in another direction away from campus.

Shortly after that, we received a call that some RAs in DeGraff had reported a strong smell of weed, and that we were needed to come check out the hall so we headed there immediately.

When we reached the area of the reported smell, Officer Dills took a few minutes to try and determine which room the smell was coming from. They knocked on the suspected door with no answer, and decided to leave it there for the night. We returned to the car, while the officer went to go file the report with the RAs.

I asked Officer Dills if he could have tried to get in the other rooms, and explained that he could have, but he knew for a fact it wasn’t coming from the other rooms, and because there wasn’t an answer, he didn’t feel it necessary to push it further. Again, I had encountered another surprise: officers won’t just barge into dorm rooms in order to get students into trouble.

After that, we roamed campus for a while. It was getting pretty late, and there was still not much going on, so we talked more about the campus, and he allowed me to ask any question I may have had about school rules. After a while, we saw a student on a motorcycle run a red light, so naturally, we pulled him over.

Of course, a few things were going on, the student ran a red light, was speeding, and had no protective eye-wear, all three things a violation of Florida law. Officer Dills gave the student a ticket, but he decided to only ticket him for the lack of eyewear, for it was the cheapest ticket, and added no points to the driver’s license. He, like the Officer Cutchins, liked to give students the chance to fix things. He agrees that it’s all about keeping students safe.

The rest of the night was spent roaming and talking, and I finally ended my night around 1:30 a.m. At the end of my shift, I was taken back up to the supervisor to fill out a form explaining what I had learned. The officers want to know any comments the students have, and want to make sure they are harboring an educational environment.

In my five hours with FSUPD my first thoughts were about how much these officers truly cared about the safety of students. The reason I don’t always see a cop at night is because they’re probably out answering calls and helping the TPD solve problems close to campus. The main focus of the FSUPD is safety for students, and they try their best every night to ensure that. If ever given the chance, talk to an officer, or, sign up to go on a ride along.